Ask.com Takes Privacy Seriously

By Greg McNevin

July 23, 2007: Taking a significant step away from traditional search engine practices, Ask.com has announced that it will soon offer completely anonymous web search.

One-upping Google’s promise to delete search histories after 18 months and cookies after two years (for users who don’t return to its site), Ask.com’s service, called AskEraser, will not store any search or user information and will enable users to tailor privacy settings.

“Anonymous user data can be very useful to enhance search products for all users, and we’re committed to being open and transparent about how such information is used,” said Jim Lanzone, Ask.com CEO in a statement. “But we also understand that there are some who are interested in new tools that will help protect their privacy further, and we will give them that control on Ask.com.”

Along with the completely anonymous service which will be launched by years end, Ask,com also announced that it will also be disassociating IP addresses and cookies fro search terms after 18 months.

The move will no doubt be applauded by privacy advocates, many of whom have criticised search engines for their data retention practices. Particularly in view of Google’s blatant disregard for privacy and last year’s search data snafu at AOL which saw 650,000 searches leaked onto the internet, enabling some reporters to track down at least one of the companies customers via the leaked search terms.

When AskEraser is launched the company will become the first major search engine to offer real online privacy.

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